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08/18/2005: "Biocon dilemma"
I just discovered this delightful wee snippet on the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies website. 'Republican Representative Brian Duprey has submitted a bill to the Maine State Legislature that would make it a crime to abort an unborn child if that child is determined to be carrying the as-yet-undiscovered and possibly-fantastical "homosexual gene."'
The funny side of this is imagining the Robertson-Falwell squad twisting themselves in knots over who they hate more, fags or abortionists? The serious side, for those of us who espouse a libertarian approach to genetic tech, is that this seems to me likely to one of the more popular uses of PGD, especially if it transpires that there's some mileage in the Xq28 linkage.
Of course, the long term answer is staring us in the face; as the author says
'The way to protect queers, people with disabilities (so-called), or other vulnerable humans from the fumigatorial fantasies of future eugenic moralists is to celebrate queer and differently-abled lives today, to display their joys and ennobling struggles, and to document their many contributions to us all here and now. Only a Bush-era conservative would pretend that the way to protect some vulnerable people from harm is to violate and enslave other vulnerable people.'But in the short-to-medium term, are we likely to see an increased pathologisation of 'deviant' sexuality? One doesn't have to buy into the ludicrously offensive rhetoric of 'embryonic holocaust' to find that a little disturbing.
All I can do is reiterate my long-standing view that the way to prevent people making offensive choices is by challenging the offensive views that underpin them, not by depriving them of the choices.
